Sometimes they are called rice paper rolls, summer rolls or spring rolls. Whatever they call them, my heart skips a beat when I see them on the menu at a Vietnamese or Thai restaurant.

There, hiding among the deep-fried appetizers are the light, refreshing little bundles of fresh herbs, vegetables and noodles, wrapped in tender translucent rice wrappers. If I'm lucky, there's peanut sauce.

Now that most grocery stores carry rice paper wraps, or bánh tráng, it's easy to make customized rolls at home. These thin, slightly brittle sheets made of rice and tapioca starch come in rounds, squares and wedges, in sizes ranging from a few inches across to a foot wide. Unlike eggroll wrappers, these are gluten-free and don't need to be cooked.

The sheets vary a bit in thickness, brand to brand. All that is required to make them pliable for rolling is water. When working with thicker, mostly rice wrappers, I've always filled a rectangular baking pan with warm water, and submerged two rounds at a time. I place a dry, smooth-textured kitchen towel on the counter next to the pan, so that the moment the wrappers start to feel flexible, I can quickly transfer them to the towel.

If you have thinner sheets, or yours are made from slightly more fragile tapioca, you may want to place the dry rice wrapper on a dampened countertop and spritz with water from a spray bottle, or you can dab a wet towel across the surface until the sheet becomes pliable.

Then you fill and roll the way you would a burrito, and once rolled, the wrapper seals itself.

It's easy to master the method, then build spring and summer rolls out of all kinds of fresh foods. The art is in placing the fillings. Because the wraps become transparent when wet, you can line up colorful vegetables and herbs on the wrapper, and practice rolling them so that the pretty parts end up on top.

From there, the sky's the limit. I used edamame, but you can use baked tofu, mock duck or seasoned tempeh in your rolls. Colorful vegetables — like peppers, yellow squash, slivered snow peas or even sliced avocado — make your rolls a riot of color. Pile in fresh mint, cilantro or Thai basil.

These ethereally cool rolls are a perfect summer appetizer, or you can eat four or five and call it dinner.

Robin Asbell is a cooking instructor and author of "Big Vegan," "The Whole Grain Promise" and "Great Bowls of Food." Find her at robinasbell.com.